~ The psychology of horror

Revised formula for estimating IQ from bio-demographics

Many years ago, I noticed that IQ was correlated with a great many physical and demographic traits such as head size, height, income, education, etc. This gave me the idea of trying to estimate peoples’ IQs based on bio-demographics. A member of Prometheus society brilliantly suggested that “multiple regression” would be the classic application for my idea, and he also suggested that I use religiosity as one of the demographic traits.

Well it turns outs psychologists have been using demographic traits like education and occupation to estimate premorbid IQ in people suspected of dementia for years, but they don’t include biological traits except for race. I thought it would be interesting to use a wide range of bio-demographic traits so using data from 144 Canadians (age 26 to 76) I created an equation to estimate your IQ. The sample was heavily skewed towards my demographic (Ontario men in their thirties) but the formula might still work on working age North Americans in general.

This formula has been substantially revised and adapted for use in Americans.

INSTRUCTIONS

Start by assuming your IQ is -1.251, and then add or subtract based on the following 25 instructions. Be honest or your estimate will not be accurate.

Education

1. If you graduated from elementary school, add 6.212 points

2. If you graduated from high school, add another 6.212 points

3. If you have a university degree, add another 6.212 points.

4. If you have a graduate degree or attended an elite college or high school, add another 6.212 points.

5. If you both attended an elite college AND have a graduate degree, add yet another 6.212 points.

Head Size

6. Multiply your cranial circumference (in inches) by 2.768 and add the resulting number of points.

Height

7. Multiply your height (in inches) by 0.418 and add the resulting number of points

Weight

8. Multiply your weight (in pounds) by 0.0927 and subtract the resulting number of points

Race

9. If you’re less than half-black, add 2.666 points

10. If you’re less than a quarter black and less than a quarter Native American, add another 2.666 points

11. If you’re more than 75% Northeast Asian, or more than 50% Ashkenazi Jewish, add another 2.666 points

12. If you’re more than 75% Ashkenazi Jewish, add yet another 2.666 points

Media preferences

13. Which of the following do you most prefer for entertainment: a) fun TV shows like sitcoms, reality TV, game shows, sports, and popular talk shows, b) intellectual TV shows about science, history or politics, c) fun books like romance novel or thrillers, or d) intellectual books like literary novels or academic texts. If you chose “a” add 0 points, if you chose “b” add 3.451 points, if you chose “c”, add 6.902 points, and if you chose “d”, add 10.353 points.

Sex

14. If you’re male, subtract 5.1 points

Income

15. Multiply the number of figures in your yearly pre-tax income by 1.869 and add the resulting number of points. If you’re retired, use your peak earnings, adjusted for inflation. If much of your earnings go into your business or if you’re too rich to have a conventional income, simply divide your individual net worth by ten to approximate your income.

Religiosity

16. If you believe in God, subtract 3.901 points.

17. If you’re a creationist who does not believe in evolution, subtract another 3.901 points.

Political conservatism

18. Which of these U.S. political parties would you most like to see in power: The Green party, the Democrats, or the Republicans? If you picked the Green party, subtract 0 points, if you picked the Democrats, subtract 3.405 points, and if you picked the Republicans, subtract 6.81 points.

Alcoholism

19. If you’re an alcoholic, subtract 2.282 points

Smoking

20. If you’re a smoker, subtract 2.282 points

Age

21. Multiply the number of years you’ve been alive by 0.194 and add the resulting points

Birth Order

22. Multiply your birth order by 0.885 and subtract the resulting points. So if you’re your biological mother’s third born, multiply 3 by 0.885 and thus subtract 2.655 points.

Rushton and Lynn claim men are smarter than women. My sample didn’t find that,..also, because so many of the other variables in the formula are biased in favor of men (i.e. income, height, head size), the formula subtracts points for being male to balance things out.

Cultural and religious stuff make all the difference in this study and show us that intelligence without statistical correlates form or iq, correlate very well with personality, if personality is their identity composition. Intelligence and personality are the same thing. What do you like to do or be, express their personality and personality express their intelligence type, quantitative, qualitative ( technic or intelectual strenghts, creative or convergent, etc… Generally, we dispise our weaknesses).

Intelligence is like climate. Climate measurement and categorization, need continentality, latitude and altitude. Intelligence need to be measured AND analysed by intensity ( continentality), Quantity (latitude) and or quality (altitude). Some or many people are more qualitatively smart than most of quantitatively smarts.
I really doubt that ”iq statistical hierarchy” express near to be perfect the distribution of the intelects.
Iq-fetischists no have any doubt about their dogmatic beliefs of course.

Intelligence and creativity are types of personalities with respective variations inside and outside the spectrum.

We have a constelation of behavioural, psychological traits among ‘gifted’ people but psychometricians and intelligence ‘experts” give attention only to iq scores. This stupidity make me mad!!

Only curiosity and originality can answer 30% about traits of smart and or creative people.

It’s irrelevant. You are intelectually curious?? You have many interesting ideas or have a very good memory and can made convergent correlations and analogies with complex intelectual or technical material?? You are observative about what is happening around you?? …

Pumpkin Person, would you please define “elite college “? In this paper,Is it just a member of some list of the most prestigious American ones or a sat score cut-off, or more general criteria can be applied here? It doesn’t work if a foreigner wanna try your formula The easiest idea is it might be a number of candidates/ number of available student position ratio , but yet again , it can not work the same way everywhere for many obvious reasons.
Any ideas would be appreciated.

Well keep in mind that the formula was designed to work on North Americans, so extrapolating to other countries is risky, but as a general rule, I would say that a student knows he’s at an elite college if 99% of whites in his country (who are the same age as him) are either attending a less prestigious college, or no college at all.

I really like this questionnaire. It’s probably not as good for people from other countries, but the idea and execution is fascinating.
Just one thing: Why didn’t you include myopia? It has a correlation of .2 to .25 with IQ. If you look at the distribution for different races and educational levels it’s pretty impressive. Some think the correlation is actually caused by the same genes that are responsible for brain growth (although that’s highly speculative).

I really wanted to include myopia. The problem was myopia did not correlate with IQ in the data set I used, at least not independently of the other variables .

I believe there is a correlation between IQ and myopia but in a data set with over a dozen correlates, odds are some will not show up because of sampling error. What are the odds of including this many variables in a data-set and having every one of them correctly correlate correctly. Some correlations will be too high, some too small, and some in the wrong direction. There’s always going to be sampling error, unless the sample size is really, really huge.

I made it by entering bio-demographic and IQ data on 144 Canadians into a statistical software package called SPSS. SPSS then weighs the data to create the most accurate formula possible for predicting IQ from the biodemographics.

To make a simple example, if you want to predict someone’s IQ from one variable, say education, you would construct a scatter plot with IQ on the Y axis and education on the X axis and and the line of best fit is the line that predicts everyone’s IQ from their education in a way that minimizes the error of the prediction. The line of best fit can be thought of as the line connecting the average value of Y for a given value of X, because at each level of X, most values of Y are going to be closer to the average value of Y for said value of X than any other value of Y. So the line of best fit for a scatter plot predicting IQ from education can be thought of as the line connecting the average IQ of people at every level of education:

Now if you want to predict IQ from two variables, you do the same thing except instead of a line of best fit running through a two dimensional scatter plot, you have a plane of best fit running through three dimensions.

Once you go beyond two predictors, you require more than three dimensions.

Someone can be an exception to the line of best fit for any one predictor (i.e. a high IQ person with no education, or a low IQ person with a huge head), but the more variables you include, the less likely one is to be an exception to every trend, and the more relatively independent predictors you include, the less error there is around the prediction (because people who are overestimated by one predictor will be underestimated by another predictor, and error cancels out)

I remember that you were saying that if we want to predict IQ based on more than one variable we have to use multiple regression … how does it work ? Does this work when you have something like 10 variable or are you forced to use a software at some point ?

Well, depending how I fiddle with my weight (I had a high stress job away from home and gained about 20 lbs), I measure in at 129-136. I really pushed myself to be as reflective as possible – even that must be a measure of iq – and came out with the range. The religiosity question is nuanced. I am a Christian, but more in the David Bentley Hart stream; that is, a quasi-Lutheran who reads theology. So probably a wash.

Anyway, my work pays for professional intelligence assessments, and I signed up for one a few days ago, so it will be interesting to see if my results match those of your other reader whose scores practically matched!

Based on knowledge of myself, I reckon my score would be around 120-125, but who knows… the self-discovery will be its own reward.

For the record, what would you estimate your confidence level and margin of error to be for this test?

Keep in mind that the formula has been adjusted to predict your IQ on a pure measure of g (which doesn’t exist in reality), and the 95% confidence interval is +/- 14.5 points. In other words, in 95% of cases, your IQ as measured by a perfect measure of g will fall within 14.5 points of the predicted IQ from this formula

Would you be willing to take a look at my results? I, like you, find IQ testing to be very interesting. One observation: I took a Danish Mensa test a few days before my test – just for kicks – and became worried that this would be inflate my Matrix Reasoning. Of course, it didn’t as the WAIS IV isn’t content-based. My two scores were exactly the same.

Which of these U.S. political parties would you most like to see in power: The Green party, the Democrats, or the Republicans? If you picked the Green party, subtract 0 points, if you picked the Democrats, subtract 3.405 points, and if you picked the Republicans, subtract 6.81 points.

Pumpkin Person has essentially explained it as conservatives being more open to violence, and like criminals, have lower intellects. Cognitive dissonance to change (resistance to change is conservatism) also is a potential reason. Of course one must understand, this equation is for the individual, and it appears that way within each race (I.E. Black Liberals aren’t necessarily smarter than white conservatives, just black ones, and White Liberals aren’t necessarily less intelligent than Asian conservatives etc., etc.).

Wow, so a black conservative is less intelligent than a liberal one. I guess there was merit to being called an uncle tom, or made to believe a political narrative about how I should feel by white liberals.

I’ve gained points by losing muscles recently unfortunately. But I’ve lost more points by being an old fashioned Bernie Sanders « democrat » (everything liberal except for mass migration schemes). And with a small impact on points, I’m keeping a tenured prestigious indépendant low 6-figures job against a more time consuming low to to middle 7-figures one. (And I chose law when I could have done quant finance and be as happy, but it money would have staid in the 7 probably).

I don’t know if it’s my actual one. Maybe it was a Mensa estimate. We have Grandes Écoles wich is like Ivy. And the three best , ENA, Ecole Polytechnique and Normale Sup Ulm, suppose getting various grades in general. I’m a big headed tall guy (Marsha data are scary for a women) And you didn’t take into account myopa. I have very good sight (my eyes were like microscope. I could see the different components of a wire cloth. A military physician once told me you have a better sight than a fighter pilot but your too big for the plane ! And too tall for the tank. You could only run behind it !